S p i r i t ' s F r e e d o m
by Raven Sheridan
Summary: A dA inspired fic. Katara feels overwhelmed by her ability to Bloodbend, so she tries to balance it by learning to bend plants from the swamp Master. But the Swamp Spirit has other plans for her when a factory begins polluting her waters. M for violence
1. Nightmare

Another one based on an AMAZING deviation by Acaciathorn on entitled Swamp Thing Katara. It is so unimaginable creepy and beautiful all at the same time….just wow. Acacithorn provided a mini-story to go along with this pic, and I am just going to be elaborating on it.

Yes, this is an ATLA fanfic, but first and foremost it is in honor of Acaciathorn and her beautiful artwork!

**Acaciathorn's Mini-story**

_A year after the events of ATLA, Katara returns to the Swamp to learn more about botanical waterbending - she hopes to learn from the vine-bending master there. Unbeknownst to her, however, the Swamp is slowly being polluted by poisonous sludge from a fire nation factory upstream - one of the many that have been converted to civilian-owned enterprises since the war's end. Sickened and unable to defend itself, the Spirit of the Swamp grows desperate. Finally, seeing no other option, it possesses Katara and uses her to destroy the factory. While the Spirit waits to recover, it continues controlling her like some creepy marionette, attacking anyone who dares trespass within its borders..._

On with the ooey gooey goodness!

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_A bead of sweat rolled down Katara's cheek as she crouched in a defensive stance. She manipulated a stream of water from her waterskin to encircle her, twining around her body like a giant snake, ready to strike at a moment's notice. She was surrounded. Firebender's cautiously marched toward her, caging her in. They moved slowly, knowing the damage the Waterbending master was capable of inflicting on the unwary._

_Littering the ground were countless bodies, bloodied and broken. Some that had been charred still wore the fear and agony of their last moments alive before they'd been brutally murdered by the Firebenders. The streets of Ba Sing Se were crowded with Fire Nation soldiers, and the whole city burned relentlessly._

_Tears streamed down Katara's face. Her expression twisted into pure rage and she pushed the water away from her. She froze the leading edge of the liquid serpent, turning into a razor-sharp disk of ice. She ruthlessly cut down the waves of soldiers coming at her, taking sick pleasure in watching their bodies fall, spraying out their essential life force in a crimson rain. She threw her head back and laughed, allowing the blood of her enemies to soak into her ruined clothes._

_Her mind and spirit were utterly broken and she continued to laugh at the destruction she had caused. A single dark thought come to the surface of her shattered sanity. _

_Bloodbending. _

_She would make the bastards pay for killing her friends, for killing Aang._

_The memory of his lifeless body strewn across the steps of their Ba Sing Se residence, fallen beside the spent bodies of her brother and Toph served to fuel the madness within her. She flung her arms outward, and with a shuddering breath she seized control of every living creature within the city's walls. As one, their bodies snapped to awkward angles as Katara commanded the very blood within their veins. Their agony was excruciating as the young woman played havoc within them. She pulled at them ruthlessly. She was their Master, and they her puppets. Their fear was intoxicating, swelling tangibly in the air. _

_She soon grew tired of this game. She wanted them to know true pain! She turned the blood still coursing within them to tiny razor blades to eat away at them from the inside. The city rang with the anguished screams of her "toys". As if she were pulling on a rope, she violently commanded all of that viscous liquid to come to her. It ripped free of their bodies in a scarlet storm, leaving them totally drained as they collapsed to the pavestones._

_The sight of so much blood, so much death, startled Katara out of her insanity and she instantly relinquished control of the sea of blood. It rained down on the city, crackling in the fires and soaking the earth. She fell to her knees, sobbing._

"_What have I done?" She stared at her hands in horror. Blood dripped from them, and she didn't know if it was hers or her victim's._

"_Unnh…"_

_Her head whipped to her left, to the steps of their house. To her shock Aang stirred and tried to sit up._

"_AANG!" she cried and she went to him, half crawling, slipping in the river of blood, inches deep, that flowed in the streets._

"_Ka..ta…ra," he coughed and spat, blood staining his lips. His own blood._

"_No…no…Aang, I thought you were gone," she sobbed desperately into her hands. He feebly reached towards her, but he didn't have enough strength and his arm fell back to the ground._

"_Katara," he whispered. "What have you done? Why?"_

_She backed away from him, stung by the accusation in his voice. "I don't know! I thought you were dead! I… I just lost control! But you're alive. I can heal you!"_

_She fumbled with the cap on her waterskin and pulled the water out. But the water was no longer pure. Instead it was a sickly pink, stained with the blood of her enemies. She tried to separate the two liquids, but failed._

_But an idea sparked in her. She pulled some of the blood from the street behind them and let it hover beside here. "Where is your injury?"_

"_It won't work, Katara. It's time, my love." His eyelids fluttered, fighting to stay open. "Please, let me have one last kiss from you, my beautiful waterbender."_

"_NO! It has to work! I can't lose you!" Tear streamed down her face, cutting clean paths in the grime on her face._

_Her hands roamed his body, searching for the fatal wound. She found in on his side. With all of her concentration, she tried to force the borrowed life force into Aang's body, but it would not go. He screamed in agony, the sound reverberating in the empty city._

"_My love, just let it happen. It's time," he breathed, pain coloring his voice. He cupped one hand against her cheek and smiled gently. "I love you, Katara. I've always loved you."_

"_I love you, Aang."_

_He was gone, and she was truly, truly alone._

_She screamed into the night, crying out all her pain, rage and shame to an unforgiving world._

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Katara bolted upright in her bed. Her hands frantically searched the sheets beside her in an effort to convince her that _this_ was reality now, not that horrendous nightmare. She was soaked through with sweat, her hair clinging to her face. Trembling, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and took a shaky step toward the door and down the hall to the washroom.

She felt so off center. Her powers were so unbalanced. Even though she never used Bloodbending, it felt like a taint upon her spirit. She had to find a way to achieve order in her heart. She splashed her face with cool water, dried it, and returned to bed to lay awake the rest of the night, terrified to fall asleep.

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**A/N: **That's one doozy of a nightmare, dontcha think? I'm kinda shocked at myself at the amount of violence in this first chapter. I was intended to make this purely kid-friendly, but apparently that went out the window. XD

Anyhoo, you really have to see this picture to get where I'm coming from. We all saw how dark Katara can be when she puts her mind to it, but this is going a step or two (or three thousand) further. Her expression in the pic, even though she's possessed at the time, is so purely "I'm gonna rip your **** off and feed it to you," that I wanted to explore this Dark Katara a bit further. Hope you enjoyed! Chapter 2 will hopefully be up soon, but I'm sure the holiday weekend will attempt to throw a monkey wrench in my writing time!

[h e a r t],

Nyx


	2. Reflection and Resolution

**I forgot to mention in the first chapter that yet again, my squeamishness about leaving our heroes as younguns has caused to to mysteriously age them a few years to legal ages. So Katara is 20, Sokka's 21, and Aang will be 18 again. XD I say this because I've decided to add a lemony chapter somewhere in the flow of this fic. Not sure where yet, but it'll be there, fear not! Anywhoo, kind of a boring chapter, I'm sorry, but necessary to plot progression! Enjoy!**

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**Ch. 2: Reflection and Resolution**

Katara did her best to stay busy over the next few days in vain effort to distract her whirling mind. Flashes of that horrible nightmare kept taunting her, intent on driving her mad. She spent most of her days by the small creek just below the cloud line, a short way down the mountain from the Jongmu (Southern) Air Temple practicing her bending forms. Communing with water always brought peace to her soul, and she needed that small amount of peace now more than ever.

The simple exercise in the high altitude left her lungs straining. She fought through the discomfort with an unrealistic need to prove her own worth, that she wasn't some monster. A small part of her mind told her she was punishing herself for something that had never really happened, yet she tried very hard to ignore this bit of truth in favor of her continued self-flagellation.

She'd been praying to the Moon and Ocean spirits for guidance these past few nights. She was even considering asking Aang to travel to the spirit world and ask them on her behalf, but he'd be curious and she just wasn't ready to tell anyone yet. She was on her own with this horrid burden in her heart.

Farther up the path, Sokka watched his sister with worry. She'd been so distant lately, so uncharacteristically un-Katara-like that he'd decided to intervene. He watched as she glided through her forms with ease born of years of practice, and he envied her. He'd never admit it, of course, but he secretly wished he'd been a waterbender like her.

He watched Katara finish the set and kneel next to the stream. He started to turn away to return to the temple so she could have some privacy when the sound of sobbing drifted toward him. He glanced back, alarmed, to see Katara holding her head in her hands, silver tears dropping from between her fingers to the dusty earth.

Oh no, this would not do.

Sokka strutted back down the path, whistling merrily. He made sure he made plenty of noise to alert her to his presence, and swaggered slowly enough to give her time to right herself.

Katara knew Sokka well enough by now to know that he'd seen her breakdown, and was grateful to her big brother for giving her next move. But she wasn't concerned with appearances anymore. The spirits gave her the sign she needed in the form of family. So she remained sitting and slowly wiped away her tears with the back of on slender hand.

"Why, hello little sister. I almost didn't see you there. What brings you out here this lovely morning? Waterbending? Excellent!" He was rambling, and in his fatherly/psychiatrist voice to boot. "I thought you might be able to teach me some of your moves. Who knows? I'm already an honorary Kyoshi warrior, maybe I can be an honorary waterbender, too?"

Katara gave a small laugh at her goofy brother's antics. She could see straight through him as if he was a clear pool of water. "Thanks, Sokka, but I know you saw me crying. It's okay, really."

She patted the soft grass beside her, needing to be close to her brother. When he settled next to her, she gave a small sigh and began telling him her troubles.

"The other night, I dreamt. It…it was a terrifying dream. Ba Sing Se was burning, you, Aang, and Toph were dead. I was all alone." She looked at her hands in her lap and took one shuddering breath.

"I got so _angry_. I wanted all of those soldiers to feel my pain…so I used bloodbending on them," she whispered the last part, spreading her hands wide in a helpless gesture. "I killed them all, Sokka. I tore their blood from their bodies and watched it flow a foot deep in the streets. I _laughed_… I enjoyed watching their faces contort in pain."

Silent tears rolled down her bronzed cheeks and she stared into Sokka's eyes imploringly. "I killed so many people, Sokka. So many people…." She looked away, out over the flowing stream, so like the one in her dream , save for it's color.

"Katara, it was only a dream. It's not real, you've never killed anyone your entire life!" He placed a steadying hand on her should and tilted her chin up with the other to look her in the eye. "Sis, it'll be okay."

"No it's not, Sokka. Not as long as I have this filthy knowledge in my head, it'll never be okay."

He stared at the dirt path for a moment. He had no idea what to say to make her feel better. She was in so much pain, that much was plain, and seeing her hurting was killing him inside. He was her brother, by the spirits, and it was his job to ease her suffering.

"Hey, remember back in the Fire Nation, when I was feeling all down on myself because I was the only non-bender of our gang?"

Katara nodded once, puzzled but intrigued.

"Well, remember how finding Master Piandao helped me sort through all that? Maybe finding you a master will help you get past this and show you that you aren't really a crazed psycho bender like Hama!"

She gave him a look of death, and he winced slightly, but continued. "Don't you think, that maybe, it might kinda sorta help? Possibly?"

Her eyes were still haunted, but a new light sparked in their depths, so he knew that he'd gotten through to her. "Maybe…. I don't know. I already know so many forms that I doubt Master Pakku could have much more to show me."

"True, true…Hey! What about the swamp master? You could learn to bend plants! That's pretty harmless, right?" She gave him another death-look, but it didn't have quite the oomph as the last one, so he didn't bother flinching this time. "Come on, you know big brother is right…" he cajoled her, lightly punching her in the arm.

She grinned, not as brightly as usual, but hey, he'd take what he could get. "Sokka, thanks." She suddenly launched herself at him and gave him a hug that could rival a polar bear's. "You're the best brother in the four nations."

He puffed his chest out. "I know, right? Still wanna show me some of those wicked bending moves?"

Katara laughed and stood, holding out a hand to help him up. "As soon as I come home from the swamp, I'll show you any move you want." He took her offered hand, and together they set off back up the mountain in the cool, light misty morning air.

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**A/N: Boring, I know. -_- It'll get better, I promise! I'm off to Texas tomorrow, and I have a 9 hour drive ahead of me, so no writing at least for the next day or so, but I promise to get work done whilst I'm away on vacation!**

**[h e a r t]**

**Nyx  
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